Used Motor Oil Furnace?

Before it gets cold, I was considering building one. I thought I had downloaded plans for one but darned if I can find them. The one I was thinking about had a drip tube for the oil, and it dripped into a pan being used as a burner. Burns clean, no stinky burned oil exhaust. Sound familiar to anyone?

A neighbor had a drip system setup in a regular barrell furnace. He just had a steel can suspended above it with a copper pipe running into the bbl, with a brass valve to adjust. He just got the wood going, then turned on the oil which dripped on the logs. Once he got it set properly, he said one load would burn for about a day or so with the oil, they acted like a wick.

We had a commercially built waste oil heater in a shop that we sold a few years ago. It was great, BUT you had to run it more or less all the time for it to keep working right, which meant we were always scrounging for old waste oil, even though we did oil changes in our shop. If you let it sit without running for a while, it would clog up and you'd have to work on it before it would run right again, which meant that it was fine in the winter, but not so good during the summer months when it didn't need to run as much. Also, you really had to keep up on things like filter changes and cleaning out the exhaust.

Be careful in soliciting supplies of waste oil. Most people who just want to get rid of their used oil from their car are okay, but beware of people who run heavy equipment, etc, and want to get rid of a lot of it. There will probably be SOME waste oil in that 55 gallon drum they want to give you, along with antifreeze, diesel fuel, and whatever else they dumped in it. Now their waste disposal problem is yours. The guys who bring you waste oil in the jugs that their new motor oil came in are usually pretty reliable, as are guys bringing 5 gallon buckets. They've probably got a boat with twin engines, but again, beware of people operating commercially (fishermen, tour operators, etc) because some of them will fuck you.

My buddy put a commercially made waste oil heater in his shop a few years ago. (He's a mechanic) The first year he had it was a slow business/ cold winter. He figured that it just about saved him from bankruptcy. I'll talk to him and ask if he's still in love with it or if he has any input/gripes/advice now that he's been using it a few years.